DINING; Classic Italian (With a Pinch of American)

By Stephanie Lyness- NY Times, December 26, 2004

Whenever I'm driving along Route 1 in Westbrook, which is a small town, I'm always surprised to see so many restaurants, from clam shacks to big steak houses, old standards alongside the occasional newcomer.

There may be no easy answer to this puzzler. It's almost “crazy,” to use the English translation for Pazzo, a cozy little Italian restaurant that is the new guy on the block here.

But maybe one way toward a solution is to eat through the problem. That's what we set out to do one cold weeknight recently in Westbrook, as a full moon cast long shadows across the many big restaurant parking lots along Route 1, and we passed signs promising seafood, cocktails, steak and pasta.

We found the parking stalls in the lot at Pazzo filling up, even at an early hour, and we began to think that, in Westbrook anyway, if you open a new restaurant, they will come.

I'm not sure, by the end of our very pleasant visit, that we had any more clues about what makes Westbrook such a restaurant magnet, even in winter. But I do know that if Pazzo were much bigger, some of the other restaurants would need to be very worried, because it's already one of the best in town, certainly one of the most interesting new restaurants on the shoreline.

Until early last summer, the little building that houses Pazzo was still just someone's house. Its first commercial conversion was to a deli. That lasted only a few weeks, before the transition to Italian bistro.

Its size there is one L-shaped dining room, with tables close together, and a small separate bar is part of its charm. It's not elaborately decorated or even especially pretty, but there are some cute café curtains, wall sconces with the lights dimmed pretty low and crisp white tablecloths.

But it's not the décor that's been packing them in here. It's the clever, almost whimsical menu, the talent in the kitchen and a professional and polished staff in the dining room.

Pazzo's menu is full but not long, an assortment of intriguing appetizers, a few salads, some very creative pasta selections, and fewer than a dozen entrees, duck, veal, steak and some seafood. It is grounded with some traditional Italian classics fried calamari, to start, linguini with clams, or veal scallopini, to name a few. But there is also a fresh enterprising spirit, from the appetizer of artichoke stuffed with lobster and fresh tarragon aioli, to grilled tenderloin of lamb stuffed with white truffle cheese and served with an orange salad.

There are so many intriguing things on the menu, in fact, that it's hard not to start planning a return visit even before the first one is over.

We were greeted when we sat down with a plate of cheese and sliced pepperoni, a welcoming gesture but a little worrisome, since the cheese cubes looked and tasted like a happy hour gone bad. But a first glance at the menu gave us hope that things were going to get a lot better, and they did.

Some of the appetizers that seemed especially intriguing included cornmeal-crusted fried oysters, with smoked pepper aioli, $9, and the marinated seafood salad, with calamari, smoked mussels, scungilli and herbs, topped with a poached gulf shrimp, $10.

We ended up trying what seemed to be the most clever of all, poached asparagus topped with a basted egg, $9, which swept us up, as if on a magic carpet, to a café table on St. Mark's Square, far from Route 1 in Westbrook. It was served with a half dozen morel mushrooms, rich and earthy, all in white truffle oil and sprinkled with grated parmesan-reggiano. The cheese cubes were long forgotten.

Another appetizer we sampled came from the nightly specials, jumbo shrimp wrapped in prosciutto, grilled and served over a bed of mesclun greens. This tasted as good as it sounded, big plump shrimp and an interesting contrast between the salty prosciutto and sweet orange slices mixed in with the fresh greens.

The pastas at Pazzo are also a promising selection, with some traditional leanings. We liked the sound of the rigatoni with veal and pork Bolognese, $17, or the more subtle penne with smoked salmon, slab bacon, fresh tomatoes and tomato and peas in a vodka cream sauce, $18.

There is fresh lobster ravioli with sautéed spinach in a pink vodka sauce, $21, or, very tempting, a fresh goat cheese ravioli with fresh tomato and lamb ragu, $19.

The entrees lean slightly toward meat and foul, with a traditional veal scallopini, $22, or a peppered New York strip steak in a brandy cream sauce. There are scallops, though, pan seared with capers and white wine and served with spinach and couscous, $23.

We tried the other fish entrée, pan roasted monkfish, $22, and found it one of the delights of the evening. A pig portion of rich-tasting was cooked in a hearty sauce of fresh diced tomato, roasted garlic and smoked bacon and served with sautéed spinach and garlic mashed potatoes.

We also enjoyed a pan-roasted Cornish hen that was, improbably and curiously, in a garlic herb broth with littlenecks and chorizio sausage. It was served in a soup bowl with the same creamy and smooth garlic mashed potatoes that accompanied the monkfish. In all, it was tasty, though a bit too bland to be a great success.

From a dessert menu that includes molten chocolate cake, tartufo, crème brule, Linzer torte and made-on-thepremises profiteroles, we tried the ricotta cheesecake, also staff made. This was a nice finish, rich and a little

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